Recognition without Perceptual Identification: A Measure of Familiarity?

Abstract

Previous work has shown that when items in a perceptual identification task are presented too quickly to identify, participants can still discriminate between studied and unstudied items. Such recognition without perceptual identification (RWPI) has been shown to occur in a variety of situations, including the false recognition of semantic associates of studied items. The present study investigated the utility of the RWPI paradigm for isolating instances of recognition that are familiarity based from those that are recollection based. Toward this end, the magnitude of the RWPI effect was compared in item versus associative recognition and in short versus long lists. The RWPI effect was larger in item than in associative recognition, and larger with short than with long study lists. These results are interpreted within the context of a dual-process approach to recognition and support the notion that RWPI taps familiarity-based recognition.